The Audi A1 is the first light car to achieve an ANCAP 5-star rating against the independent vehicle safety authority’s most stringent test criteria.

The vehicle scored strongly for its performance in Adult Occupant Protection (AOP) with a score of 95 percent. It also scored well for its protection of younger occupants achieving a Child Occupant Protection score of 88 percent with close to full points recorded by the six- and ten-year child dummies in the frontal offset and side impact crash tests.

ANCAP said the A1 performed particularly well for a vehicle in its class in the area of Safety Assist, achieving 82 percent. The vehicle has a range of collision avoidance features as standard, including autonomous emergency braking (AEB) with pedestrian and cyclist detection, lane keep assist (LKA) and emergency lane keeping (ELK).

“This is an impressive score for a vehicle in the Light Car category,” said ANCAP Chief Executive, James Goodwin. “It is encouraging to see vehicle brands prioritise collision avoidance capabilities across their model line-ups, including the smaller city cars which mix regularly with pedestrians and cyclists in addition to other vehicles.”

The 5-star rating applies to all Australian and New Zealand Audi A1 variants on sale from November 2019 and May 2019 respectively.